


summer clouds

by dreadfulbeauties



Category: For Me and My Gal (1942)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Ice Cream, Post-Canon, well SOMEONE had to write fic for these cuties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:14:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26040226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadfulbeauties/pseuds/dreadfulbeauties
Summary: One year after the war, Harry and Jo go out to get ice cream.
Relationships: Harry Palmer/Jo Hayden
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	summer clouds

It is late afternoon and the sky is tinted periwinkle. People bustle about throughout the streets of New York, Jo and Harry just two among many. Perhaps the only thing to distinguish these two are the ice cream cones they carry. They’d stopped by the little red-and-white cart only a few minutes ago.

“We don’t really do anything like this too often.” Harry stops on the corner to crack off a piece of his cone. Call him a poet writing saccharine verse, but what he notices about Jo most tonight is her hair: Close-cropped and short, rose-gold sunlight illuminating the tight, reddish auburn curls.

She licks off the flakes of ice on her cone. “We certainly don’t. But I’m glad we have the chance to do things as simple as getting ice cream now, especially considering that most of the year so far has been freezing cold up till summer. And who eats ice cream in winter?”

Harry shrugs. “You never know.”

Her lips stained pink from her ice cream, Jo smiles. “I gotta say, Harry, I’m glad you remembered I like strawberry the most. And it was awfully sweet of you to pay for both our cones.”

“Was that a pun I heard?”

She gives a soft-dimpled smile. “Maybe.”

Harry looks down at his own ice cream cone — just chocolate, and far too close to dripping all over his hands if he’s not cautious enough. “Ah, Jo?”

Large, long-lashed brown eyes stare back. “Yes?”

“You have a little bit of ice cream near your lips.” Harry taps a finger near his lips. “Right there — look, I can get it for you if need be.”

She laughs. That’s another quality he notices about her. When Jo laughs, it’s not just a brief string of giggles but full, loud laughter — a full orchestra compared to a few flute notes.

“I see what you’re up to. You know, if you wanted to kiss me, you could just ask. No need to use a ploy of me getting ice cream on my face, I’ve heard that one before. From you. I’ve wisened up to your tricks.”

He raises up the hand that isn’t holding his ice cream cone. “You got me.”

“But since you want a kiss, I might as well oblige you.”

One hand reaching up to touch his dark hair, Jo has to tilt herself upward. Her eyes closing, she bumps her nose up against Harry’s face for a few moments — they stand in the middle of the slowly darkening sidewalk for a moment, shifting their positions so they don’t accidentally spill their ice cream, accidentally nudging noses against cheeks and giggling all the while. At last, Jo tilts her head just right and her lips touch up against Harry’s, as sugary-sweet and tart as the strawberry ice cream she’s just been eating. For a moment, Harry lets the taste of chocolate mixed with strawberry linger in his mouth. Then:

“I better stop before one of us spills ice cream all over the other.”

Jo pulls away, laughing that orchestra laugh again and resting her head against Harry’s shoulder. For the rest of the walk they are quiet glances and sticky-with-ice-cream fingers intertwining. And though it’s just one summer’s evening out of many, one stretch of minutes in a day, for Harry it’s much longer and much more than that. And he wouldn’t have it be any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> "i am tired and i have a headache, i should probably get some sleep," i say to myself as i google when various ice cream flavors were invented for the sake of a few-hundred words long fic for a 1940s musical movie that i doubt many people care about :]
> 
> anyways these two are adorable. i'm always a sucker for when judy and gene play couples, but jo and harry are by far my favorite (maybe that's because of nostalgia reasons, "for me and my gal" WAS the first of their films i saw)
> 
> also, jo: i am that "who". i eat ice cream in winter because i have zero impulse control.
> 
> thank you for reading this! please take care of yourselves and stay safe. (and don't follow my example)


End file.
